iDesktop.tv provides a really useful and user friendly service for anyone who wants to use video clips from sources like YouTube, but doesn't want their students looking around at anything unsuitable, or for anyone who has ever found a really useful clip, only to go back later and find it has moved or been removed.

The future of learning requires us to have the tools and the skills of connectivity and collaboration whereby we maintain streaming sources of very relevant and rapidly processable information. This appears to be one of these tools...

Media Statistics

We continue to see our visits at an all time high, but we are circulating less books than we have in the past two years. We have been encouraged by the numbers of lessons taught this year, and we look forward to seeing this number continue to grow.

by Barry Lyga Recently I said that I wasn’t a huge fan of trilogies anymore (in case you missed it, I feel that it is an author’s way to sell more books and make more money), but I guess I just had...

BI Media Specialists's insight:

Mrs. Lukkarinen and I both finished the third installment in this awesome trilogy last month. If you are looking for a good series, look no further. I think the second and third books are even better than the first!

This is a great tutorial for using iMovie with the iPads. Having students create videos is a great way to identify what students know. This can be used as a cumulative project for the whole semester or just a unit of study.

This article explains how to use iMovie on a iPad, there is a video begin made through iMovie on a iPad on this specific topic. I find it very interesting that iMovie can be used on iPad the iPad is starting to act as the Mac book.

Imagine a world where resources were limited to what was found in the classroom or the school closet known as the "Curriculum Materials Room." Picture a world where students wrote letters with pen and paper to communicate with other students and adults outside of the building. Due to postage costs, the teacher either sent the letters in bulk or paid for stamps out of his or her own pocket. Can you recall a time when student interests like skateboarding or video were never used as part of learning curriculum because the tools needed were either too expensive or not yet conceptualized? Do you remember a time when non-traditional learners struggled, and absenteeism meant a high likelihood of students doing poorly in school, and possibly having to retake the course?

If you experienced none of these scenarios, then you live in a world of possibility because you grew up with the many social media tools available to support all learners. If any of these scenarios bring back memories as a teacher or student, then you understand that we have many more tools today to ensure that learners succeed despite struggles, because students and teachers have so much more available to meet every learner's needs.

For educators differentiating instruction, social media tools embrace collaboration and global access to people and other resources. We give students a variety of learning experiences that incorporate the capability to:

Sixty million people are now signed up to use Duolingo–the simple, gamified, adaptive language teaching app for smartphones and web browsers. Twenty million of them are currently active users. According to Duolingo, that means there are more people using the platform to learn languages than there are in the entire U.S. public school system.

Duolingo remains free of charge. No advertisements. No subscriptions. No upsells. No in-app purchasing.

Foreign Language teachers - check this out! It is a great app that gets students to use a foreign language on a daily basis. It is a great app to use in the classroom and possibly for homework activities!

Making language acquisition accessible, inside and poutside of the classroom, Duolingo has the potential to change the way teachers, parents and AT professionals think about differentiated and personalized adaptive learning products.

n If it’s been a while since you’ve returned to ReadWriteThink, I urge you to consider a visit today.

The quality portal, rich with free resources and sponsored by the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Verizon Foundation has grown even more interactive.

So what’s new? There’s an array of simple, elegant mobile apps available for iOS and Android that may be discovered by browsing grade level, type, learning objectives and theme."

Kahoot! is a classroom response system which creates an engaging learning space, through a game-based digital pedagogy. Kahoot! is an easy-to-use blended learning platform which works on any device, making the classroom interactive, encouraging both educators and learners to ask great questions.

On recommendation from Mrs. Akin, we have tried this app and love it! You can create custom quizzes and download class data, much like you can with a CPS system. Check it out and see how you like it! There are quizzes already created by other teachers that you can try or you can create your own.

Kahoot! is a game-based pedagogy delivered online via mobile technologies to make learning at any level interactive and engaging for both the learner and educators. This is of interest to my work as we are always looking for technology that engages students in their learning in an interesting and easily accessible way.

A few years ago Explain 3D launched as a website to showcase 3D animations of simple machines. Later the site expanded to include 3D animations of elements of the universe. This week Explain 3D launched a new iPad app for the same purpose as the website.

Students with parents who are up-to-date on their child(ren)'s lives tend to perform better in school. Fortunately, technology offers a variety of ways that can save teachers time as well as keep parents engaged. Here are some notable tools used by teachers and parents.

If there’s an Apple TV in the classroom, it’s most likely used to mirror teacher and student iPads or MacBooks. There are plenty of other ways to display an iPad on a large screen, and Apple TV is one of the most popular because it has AirPlay. AirPlay is Apple’s technology that will stream a live view of whatever is on an iOS device's screen. This is why Apple TV is so popular. This mirroring ability through AirPlay is built into all iPads (except the first generation iPad) and all newer iPhones and iPod touches.

The answer: in more ways than you could imagine. While Skype was not designed as an educational tool, it’s quickly becoming one as teachers discover the many ways it enriches their lessons and the lives of their students. Even something as simple as hosting a guest speaker through a video call can add excitement to a lesson.

As with any tech tool, it can seem daunting to introduce this into your classroom at first. If you don’t know where to start, try one of these five creative ideas.

Mr. Fermin has effectively used Skype in band to connect students to a composer as they were playing one of his pieces in class. Every subject area would benefit from a classroom discussion with an expert in the field. Let us know if we can help facilitate a Skype learning experience for your students.

Microsoft recently showcased a new Skype feature that allows for real-time, two-way, voice translation! This feature will make the Skype Cultural Exchange even more extensible and will allow those who use Skype for non-native language acquisition to have in-depth conversations, in their own languages, about their progress and issues in their learning.

"A growing number of teachers are using digital portfolios for students' work -- altering the way teachers assign, collect and assess classwork and projects, writes Mary Beth Hertz, a K-8 technology teacher in Philadelphia. In this blog post, she suggests questions that teachers should answer before deciding on a platform for digital portfolios and several tools that can be used, including Dropbox,eBackpack and Wikispaces."

Have you seen the largest picture ever taken? For the record, it's a mammoth 1.5 billion pixel image (69, 536 x 22, 230) and requires about 4.3 GB disk space. Oh, and it'll take your breath away.

On January 5, NASA released an image of the Andromeda galaxy, our closest galactic neighbour, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The full image is made up of 411 Hubble images, takes you through a 100 million stars and travels over more than 40,000 light years. Well, a section of it anyway.

Prepare to feel extremely tiny and insignificant as you marvel at this fly-through video created by YouTuber daveachuk and make sure you stick around till the end. Seriously.

Most educators are familiar with Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. Many of those same educators have begun integrated BYOD strategies into their classrooms and school districts. A common concern among these educators is how to integrate Bloom's Revised Taxonomy with the power that the new technology provides. This article was originally published in March of 2014, but it is still relevant.

First Quarter Media Statistics

After an analysis of our statistics, it is apparent that the 1:1 initiative and the distribution of iPads have drastically increased student traffic in the media center. Unfortunately, we think this also negatively impacted our student circulation. We will be brainstorming ways that we can get students in the media center to read next quarter.

"Two weeks ago, we published a literary map of Brooklyn, highlighting the books we felt best represented the neighborhoods in which they were set. Compiling the list of books for that map had us thinking about what it means for a story to not just be from a place, but also of it, and why it is that some places have an abundance of literary riches (we’re looking at you, American South), while others, well, don’t. There are those stories that so beautifully evoke a time and a place and a way of life that it becomes close to impossible to separate the literary perception of a place from its reality—one winds up informing the other. All [books on this states list] are literary in voice and spirit; every last one will let you understand a time and place in a more profound way than you maybe thought possible.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.